


to storm the gates of heaven

by GreyscaleCourtier



Category: God of War
Genre: Background Relationships, Blood and Gore, Canon Compliant, Canon Continuation, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Language Because What Do You Expect, Gen, Modern Era, POV Second Person, atreus is a language professor because Of Course He Is, look i don't want to wait 7 years for more of this so I'm Doing It Myself
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-05-18 19:50:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14859168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreyscaleCourtier/pseuds/GreyscaleCourtier
Summary: Fimbulwinter left frost in your blood. The second of the omens of Ragnarok.But the frost thawed and no more omens followed.You thought you were safe.But a thousand years later, they find you.





	1. Chapter 1

A crack of thunder wakes you in a cold sweat.

You lie in frozen silence. The fire's burned low; you can tell from the crackling embers spitting sap. Your father's quiet breathing and the howling wind outside are the only other noises your hear.

You peer between the boards in the wall. Snow is falling thick and fast. No thunder. No god seeking vengeance. Just winter. Just wind.

"Boy."

You jump.

"What is it?" Father eyes you from across the room.

The wind howls.

"Nothing," you say. "Just the wind."

You go back to sleep.

-

You glare at the runes.

They glare right back.

"Any luck?" asks Marcus, hanging over your back, mug of coffee in hand.

"It's either a weird dialect or something about corn." You don't break your glare. The runes won't win. Maybe the photographs are missing something. You know every mortal tongue and a dozen more besides. You should be able to do this.

"Stop interrogating the rocks and take a break. You'll strain your eyes."

Your eyes immediately begin to ache, but you refuse to give Marcus the satisfaction. "I won't. And I can't. I have a skype call with Honoria in Reykjavik in like two hours and she's expecting something approximating a translation."

"Corn. Done. Approximate. Breakfast?"

"I can't. I have a class to teach."

Marcus makes a face. You never stay for breakfast. You give him an awkward peck on the cheek, grab your laptop, and bolt.

Germany is cold. Not cold enough, in your opinion. Not cold like home. Fimbulwinter left frost in your blood that still hasn't thawed in the last thousand years. It hadn't been easy.

~

The first year, the fires were dimmer. You had to use what greenwood you could find, and of that there wasn't much anymore. The smoke made you cough yourself hoarse for days at a time. What little game you and Father could bring home were growing smaller, weaker.

Mimir tried to keep your spirits up, but eventually his eyes shut and he fell silent. He would stay silent for days at a time.

The draugr grew in numbers. With Mother's protection staves gone, they ambled freely in your woods. Father worried and thought you couldn't tell. But you'd defended yourself. And then you hadn't.

-

You duck out of the wind to answer the buzzing phone. "Yeah."

"Andrew, it's Honoria."

"Right, hi, listen, about the runes--"

"No, sorry, this isn't about that." Honoria's voice crackles over the line. "It's about the favor I owed you? The package is at your office. It's our best guess so far."

"Oh." Shit. You can't remember what you'd asked of her. Too many memories and not enough brain, Mimir used to say when he didn't want to admit he'd forgotten something. "Thanks. I'll, uh. I'll get around to that. Thank you."

"No worries. Skype call still on?"

"It's a date." You'd better have something for her by then. You hang up and get to class.

-

The second year was brutal. Not like Father's axe is brutal, but brutal like the day you came home and found Mother collapsed in the garden. Brutal like the way you'd clung to her for - what was it? Hours? Days? - before Father finally came home.

Brutal like the draugr's teeth digging into your ribs, right under the armor, coming away in rotten sockets.

The infection ran deep and long, and you don't remember most of it. There had been visions and nightmares upon one another, interspersed with your father's voice, Mimir's shining eyes staring down on you. You swear you heard Freya, somewhere, somehow. More than once you woke in Father's arms. You can remember begging him not to leave you alone. He didn't.

Even after the fever broke and you could leave the house, Father didn't let you out of his sight for some time after. The snow kept falling.

-

"Morning," you say by way of greeting the class. None of them respond. They hate you. You sort of hate them too. "Today we're starting the unit on the dialect continuum between Eastern and Western Old Norse."

-

The third year was the harshest.

The cold crept in like ink, seeping through the cracks in the boards and the thatch of the roof. It sets Father's mouth in a thin line. It makes every trip to the river for water feel like you're back in Helheim; the wind like a whip on your back, like acid in your eyes. It drives tears from you and they freeze on your cheeks.

More often than not you steal into Father's bed, driven by the cold and the dark and the bad memories. You'll never know what sort of fire burns in him, but it keeps you alive through the winter.

Every day you wait for thunder.

-

The runes in Honoria's photographs don't give up their secrets.

You've tried rearranging them in every order you know, switching them, flipping them, ciphering them through a half-dozen languages not even spoken on Midgard. Your video call is in fifteen minutes and you can't even tell Honoria what language it is. The package she'd sent is still sitting unopened on your desk. You still can't remember what it's for.

Casting a glance at the door, you narrow your mind. It's a long shot, but you could try.

_Feoldwhën._

The tattoos on your hand begin to shimmer.

The runes on the laptop screen don't budge.

You want to swear at it in every language you know.

"Am I interrupting something?"

You jerk back. Marcus lounges in your doorway.

Your face goes hot. "You know I don't want to be bothered at work."

"Wow, okay. I was just nearby, thought I'd say hello."

You will the tattoos to stop glowing, flexing your fingers under the desk. "Look, it's - it's not a good time, okay."

Marcus looks injured. You wish you cared. "Well... all right. Don't let me stop your career or anything." He turns on his heel and leaves.

Shit. Honoria can wait. "Marcus, don't," you say as placatingly as you know how. "Look, it's not that important--"

"You've made it clear what's important."

You snatch your laptop and, after a moment's thought, Honoria's package. "Marcus. Marcus, listen." Gods, you really didn't want to do this today. "Can we talk about this?"

Marcus pauses and you know you've got him. You don't exactly treasure this... whatever it is you have with him, but you didn't have to be a cock about it. "Can I buy you coffee?" you offer.

"Fine."

You walk to the coffee shop on campus in silence. You hadn't brought your coat. It's really only for show anyway.

-

When the snow finally stopped falling, you were thirteen and felt like there was nothing in the world you were afraid of anymore. No more did you fear the dark, nor the draugr, nor the trolls, nor the gods, not your father. But whenever you heard thunder it would send a spike of dread through your chest, and you know Father sees it. You never told him about the vision, that first night. The one where you'd seen Thor, son of Odin, stand outside your childhood home, facing you and your father in the snow. It was the kind of vision you wouldn't be able to shake for centuries.

When the snow melts, something flutters to life in your heart. It feels like hope.

Baldur's death was well deserved, you think, but Mimir says it was also an omen of the end. Of Ragnarok. Fimbulwinter, the winter to last three years, was the second.

But no more omens followed.

You allowed yourself to hope that maybe, maybe it was not the end.

-

"...drew?"

You blink. "What?"

The two of you are taking the long way around the campus green, lined with trees on one side of the walkway, the other bordered by a low decorative wall.

Marcus rolls his eyes. You're dropping the ball on this. Hard. "You aren't even listening."

"Sorry, I just." You freeze. Marcus takes a few steps before he stops and sighs and glares at you.

A raven sits in one of the trees lining the walkway. It stares at you with a bright, glittering eye. It's feathers are so black they look green in the light.

The hair on the back of your neck prickles.

"Seriously? Birds still freak you out?"

The raven leans down as if to get a better look at you.

Odin uses the ravens, Mother used to say. They spy for him. That's why he made them all black, so they could creep in the shadows.

You thought it was just a story until the day you saw Father wring a raven's neck for no reason at all.

"Look, is this going to--" Marcus cuts himself off. "Holy shit."

You finally break from the raven's damning gaze and look at Marcus. He's looking up.

Thunder claps.

-

The world had come back to life after Fimbulwinter.

Not just the plants and game, either. The draugr herds thinned, then vanished. The trolls returned to their mountains. The mortals came out of hiding.

The latter caused you both no end of grief.

Father was content to remain at home, but you were not satisfied. You found something with them that you'd never had before. They sang. They told new stories. They spoke new languages. You learned every last one.

Someone hid the temples, sooner or later. They all remain - you've seen them still standing - but now covered in a careful glamour to turn mortal gazes away.

You're fifteen the first time you take the boat alone to the Lake of Nine. Your heart had pounded. Father hadn't exactly forbidden you, and why should he? You've proven yourself to him a dozen times over. You don't need his permission.

Jormungandr is pleased to see you. He doesn't speak nearly as much these days, but you talk to him instead and he seems to relish it. He calls you a name you don't recognize and another name you do.

Tyr's travel room is sealed. You don't know who had done it. Not the dwarves. It's been far too long since you even saw Brok or Sindri in these parts. Father says they had probably moved on, trying to escape the cold of the Great Winter. You wish you'd at least been able to say goodbye. The dwarves are the closest thing you had to friends.

You eventually ask Father who sealed Tyr's temple. He doesn't answer at first.

"Do you think it was Freya?" you press.

"It is likely."

"To keep us from going between the realms?"

"I should think Freya was above such spite."

But gods are petty. No one knows that better than Father.

-

The clouds swirl in the sky, darkness spreading like someone had upended a bottle of ink into the heavens. Lightning crawls along the undersides of the black masses like insects scuttling on something dead.

You look back at the raven. It's gone.

Well.

It's been centuries since you've had a good fight.

Lightning strikes the bricks before you.

-

You spent less and less time at home.

It bothers Father, even if he thinks he isn't showing it; but you're seventeen and you're _bored._ Your magic comes more readily now than when you were young, and when you grow tired of wandering the mortal villages, you twist your shape and run in the wilds. Wolves and horses are easiest, but with enough practice you manage to summon the shape of a hawk. Flight doesn't come easy, but you don't care.

Father grows used to hearing heavy paws scratching at the door when you finally come home, too tired to change back. You'd lie on the pelts by the fire to melt the snow in your fur, and more often than not you'd let yourself fall asleep there. You knew you were running yourself ragged, but the bone-deep exhaustion was better than the boredom. Anything was.

-

The son of Odin spares little time on ceremony. The wind rises to a screaming pitch as he stares you down. Mortals are staring, stunned, perhaps bewitched in place, perhaps bewitched to see something else. Red hair and red beard. He looks like Baldur otherwise, only bigger and older and a little less mad. The hammer on his belt catches the glint of the streetlights. It begins to rain.

You break the silence. "Miss your bus?"

Thor's lip rises in a snarl. "We've been looking for you," he booms. He sounds like thunder. He sounds like no one you've ever met.

"Took you a while. I'm not really hiding." They call you Silvertongue in some places of the world, with good reason. You've rarely met a situation you couldn't talk your way out of. If nothing else, you'll buy some time. You break the dam in your mind and let the magic rise up to your fingertips. You're up against Mjolnir unarmed. You'll need it.

"You have eluded us long enough." Thor takes his hammer in hand. "I will exact my revenge. And you will fulfill your purpose. _Loki."_

You don't think you'll be able to talk your way out of this one.

"Ljosta," you say under your breath.

The rain sizzles in the bolt of light you throw. It's haphazard. Sloppy. You're sorely out of practice. Thor sidesteps it easily, but you've already shoved Marcus (gently, you'd consider) behind the garden wall and summon the Specters.

The flock of screaming falcons bursts into being, but Mjolnir swings and they evaporate. Thor laughs. Lightning crashes. "This is he who killed my sons?" he roars. "This is the god, this is Loki?" He readies Mjolnir again.

"First of all," you yell over the rain, "your sons were _assholes."_ Rather than proceed to second of all, you throw another bolt of light, then another, then a third and fourth.

A thick rumble in the sky has you rolling for cover before a spike of electricity drives down from the clouds and burns a hole in the bricks. The static makes your hair rise. Too close. Too fucking close. You leap back to your feet and fire off a half dozen shots, blind in the rain and the sudden dark. The world smells like ozone and metal.

"Ragnarok is here!" Thor bellows. You've driven him onto the campus green. Great - open ground is his specialty and your weakness. "You will submit to the gods and die with the rest of the world!"

"Fuck you!" you shout back into the wind, then wince. Silvertongue indeed. You stay back, near the wall, near Marcus. You need to draw Thor closer to the trees. But if he gets it in his head to throw the hammer, the trees won't do shit to protect you.

"Modi died like a little bitch!" You shake the rain out of your eyes. "He didn't even try to stop me when I knifed him in the thr--"

The telltale whistle gives you an instant to dodge before Mjolnir slams into the tree you'd been standing by. It shatters in a way trees aren't supposed to. It doesn't splinter. It turns into dust.

Okay. You need a new plan.

-

The memories you have of your mother are fuzzy with the passage of time, but they're memories you treasure above your own life. To the Giants, she was Laufeye the Just, the arbiter, the shaper of law. A leader. A fearsome sight to her enemies, a harbinger of victory to her allies.

To your Father, she was Faye, beautiful and wild and fierce. She brought something out in him - you can remember that much, the way his cold eyes softened at her. How his hands, rough and scarred and huge in your childhood mind, could turn so tender on your mother's cheek.

But no one in the world knows her as you do. She was Mother. She hummed in the garden. She kept bundles of dogmint hanging indoors because the tea it made was often the only thing that quieted the raging fevers that plagued you. The hands that wielded the Leviathan Axe were the same hands that carried you home when you tired yourself playing outside. She taught you to read - to hold a bow - to show mercy to every living thing you could spare. Nights you'd wake up coughing blood again, Mother was there, cool hands on your forehead, cool lips to your cheek.

The pain of losing her still aches. You think it always will. You came to terms with it long ago. First you'd blamed Father. He'd been away too long. If he'd been there when she first got sick, things might be different. She could still be here.

The blame didn't last long. You couldn't bring yourself to add to the pain of your father's nameless guilt. You and he alone know who Mother truly was.

-

A chunk of flying brick grazes your cheek. The fight's gone on too long already, and the mortals won't stay bewitched forever.

You stay behind tree trunks where you can, firing off bolt after bolt. Mjolnir finally comes your way, and you duck away just as the tree explodes in a shower of splinters. You take a wild gamble and, before Thor can summon the weapon back, you sprint the short distance between you and tackle him.

Well, you try. You hit him shoulder-first and it's a bit like running into a cliff face. Thor barks a laugh and shoves you backwards with one hand. The other comes in hard across your jaw and you see stars.

You spring right back up almost before you hit the ground, but the world tips strangely and this fight has _definitely_ gone on for too long. You're vaguely aware of the sounds of screaming in the background. Oh, lovely. The mortals are in action.

Thor raises a hand in a familiar gesture. He's grinning, teeth bared, eyes wild.

Hang on. If you can time this just right -

Mjolnir whistles, from somewhere, and you leap at Thor's outstretched arm, bringing your full weight down.

Thor stumbles.

Mjolnir connects with his chest and sends him flying.

You don't stick around to see if he gets up. You're already back on your feet and running. You can lose him. Especially if he's going to make a scene here, in a densely populated city. Handling mortals with witchcraft or violence will at least slow Thor down.

Marcus. Shit. Thor will have seen you protect him. You can't let him have Marcus as a pressure point on you. You make the snap decision and jump the garden wall where you left him.

The world tilts a little before stabilizing again and Marcus is standing, face written all over with panic and confusion. He's shouting something at you that you can't hear over the rain and wind, but you grab him by the wrist and haul ass for the nearest building.

-

When you first started to wander the world, Father gave you every caution imaginable. Sometimes he'd come with you, but more often you went alone. You'd stay away for years at a time. You took every name and form you could dream of. You learned every language there was.

You learned everything.

Never such a fool as to ignore your father's warnings, you kept well away from the other pantheons of gods. But when your wandering took you to Greece, you couldn't help searching for details.

You found more than you liked.

You can still remember sitting in some dark library, hands shaking on the binding of a book as old as you were, as you read. Ares. Sparta. The Blades of Chaos. You'd known you shouldn't read on. You did anyway.

He'd never told you any of this.

You'd left the library with pain in your chest and knowledge you wish you could give back.

But you understand your father just a bit better.

-

The biology building door slams behind you and Marcus. You don't let go of his arm and you don't stop running.

"An--"

"Shut up," you snap. "Shut UP." You don't mean to be harsh but your skull still throbs and the raven from before still feels seared into your brain. "We have to go."

Marcus pries at your hand but you don't let go. You won't give Odin the satisfaction of having him. You come to an intersection in the halls and pause to think.

"Who was that?" Marcus says, half hysterical. "What the fuck just happened?"

"Long story." You look down one hall, then the other. Where are you supposed to go now? You'd thought the gods were done with you. You thought they stopped looking. You were wrong.

"Where the hell are we going?"

"Stop talking," you say. You need to think. You need to get out of here. Out of Germany.

You have to see Father.

Thunder crashes outside.

The power goes out.

-

Somehow Marcus has Honoria's package. He'd picked it up while you were busy getting your ass handed to you. You check it in at the airport and fidget while the attendant frowns at her computer. Rain lashes the windows behind you.

"And what are the contents?" the girl at the desk asks.

You summon your magic and give her your sweetest smile. "Academic materials."

She blinks as the enchantment does its work. "Of... of course." She taps a few keys. "Sorry," she says. "All flights to Reykjavik are delayed due to the weather. Are you able to wait a few hours?"

You grit your teeth but keep the smile in place. "Yeah. Sure. Just get me a ticket on the first plane you can."

Marcus pays, scowling the whole time. You're putting off an explanation, but you know you'll have to tell him the truth sooner or later.

The terminal is crowded but not packed. You take a seat in the farthest corner and settle in for a long wait. You hate waiting. You take out your phone, but the screen is shattered. You clench your jaw. Fantastic.

"So." Marcus sits beside you. "I have some questions. First and foremost, what the fuck is going on?"

You run a hand over your face. The scars on your cheek are as familiar as ever under your fingertips. "Not here."

"Mmm. Yeah. That doesn't cut it. Tell me what's happening."

A sigh bubbles up from somewhere deep in your chest. "What did you see?"

Marcus's eyebrows pull together. "What do you mean?"

"Just what I said. I need to know what, exactly, you saw."

"Uh. A thunderstorm blew up out of nowhere. Then some... some guy came out of nowhere and - and. Something bad. I don't know."

Misdirection glamour, then. Of course the gods would use one. It's the most useful spell you have these days, when you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a mortal. With it, they see everything, but afterwards they can't quite recall it. Only the sensations remain. Marcus remembers the fear and confusion, but he doesn't know what he saw.

Okay. You can come up with something.

"It's," you start, and then stop to collect your thoughts. "It's someone from, from home. Someone who really hates me."

"Like, wants-you-dead sort of hates you?"

You nod.

"So you have to leave the country and drag me with you?"

"Pretty much."

Marcus thinks about that for a minute. "So what else?"

"We're going to Reykjavik."

"I gathered that. I paid for your ticket. Why."

"...My father lives near there."

His eyes go a little wider. You've never mentioned your family to him. You hardly mention anything about yourself to him. In all honesty, you just don't have that kind of relationship.

"Your... father. We're moving a little fast for that, don't you think?"

He's going for humor, but sudden anxiety churns in your stomach about Marcus meeting Father. You have no idea how to explain yourself.

Odin is sending the gods after you, and you're worried about introducing your father to your on-again-off-again friend with benefits. Truly, your priorities are fucked.

You've been silent for too long. Marcus side-eyes you nervously. "Right," you say, just to break the silence. "Well. He's. Not exactly a people person."

Marcus rolls his eyes. "I'm a charmer. Don't worry. Who's this douchebag who wants you dead?"

You don't know how to answer that and it apparently shows on your face. Marcus's face goes from carefully casual to concerned. "Seriously. I need to know this if I'm going to let you kidnap me to fucking Iceland."

"Okay, but you can't tell anyone."

"I won't."

"I'm serious," you pressure. "I'm swearing you to secrecy. No one. You could get me killed."

He nods. "I get it. Serious business. Tell me."

You pick your words with as much care as you can manage. "He's... I've never met him before. But I know him. And he knows me. I..." You hesitate, weigh the words, and decide fuck it. "A long time ago I might have killed his son."

Marcus's eyes go wider, but to his credit, he doesn't let his face betray his thoughts any further. "How?" is all he asks.

"Don't worry about that." A knife through his throat. "He deserved it."

"Was it. You know. Self defense?"

You don't say anything. It's all still far too fresh in your mind; Father's knife in your hand, Modi's wheezing, gurgling gasps, your godhood and power so new and dizzying, clouding your mind.

Marcus seems to realize what your silence means and he goes very quiet.

Hours later, the thunder finally stops.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> IN WHICH there is a reunion, a very familiar axe, extinct plants, one big scare, and Mimir has a suggestion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy birthday waffles! this goes out to u for all the ideas you give me!

“How long is this going to take?” Marcus asks from somewhere behind you.

You grit your teeth and untangle your sleeve for the fifth time from a bramble. “Oh, I’m so sorry, do you have somewhere to _be?”_

The flight was blessedly uneventful. You and Marcus didn’t speak for the entire four hours; you, wrapped up in thoughts of what might await you at home, and Marcus, thinking fuck knows what. The flight attendant had asked if you wanted anything to drink, and you’d resisted the urge to ask for anything with an alcohol content higher than your own age. You’d smiled and declined.

You’ve been hiking for hours now. You’re pretty sure you know the way, but it’s been years and the undergrowth has changed. You press on without admitting this to Marcus. Both of you are scratched to hell. There’s more thorns than you remember.

But the gentle twittering in the trees tells you you’re on the right track.

_Loki, Loki, Loki,_ the birds chirp. _Loki is coming home. Loki has returned. Loki is coming home._

Father will be expecting you, then.

“Are you going to tell me what any of this is about?” Marcus pants. He’s lagging behind a bit, red-cheeked and probably dehydrated. You’re struck again by how fragile they are, the mortals. Defined by their ability to die.

“It’s complicated and you won’t believe most of it.”

“I’m a great listener.”

You know. Marcus was in your class last year. He was the only student who actually asked questions about your bored lectures. He actually showed up for office hours to ask questions about your linguistics research. Nobody but Honoria and the department head ever asked about your work. It had been… nice.

You still feel sort of guilty about leaving Honoria hanging. She’s always come through for you. And you - not so much. You still have her package tucked under your arm.

Fuck, that’s right. She was working a dig in Greece and you’d mentioned something about blood mead, and she promised she’d try to recreate it if she found a recipe lying around.

Well. Housewarming gift for Father, you suppose.

“You’re literally the worst at conversations.”

You jump a little. “There are many who would disagree,” you try, but Marcus is right. You have a habit of getting lost in thought at the worst times.

“So prove it and say something.”

Fine. You take a few moments to put your thoughts in order. “I’m a demigod,” you start.

Marcus says nothing. You resist the urge to glance back at him, to read his face, to know what he’s thinking. “My name is Atreus. I’m about a thousand years old, and the Nordic pantheon _really_ fucking hates me.”

“Atreus.” He fumbles a bit with the unfamiliar name.

“Right.”

“So… your dad?”

“Also a demigod. Or a god. I’m still fuzzy on the terminology.”

Marcus is silent for a few moments more. “And you were teaching at a human university, why?…”

“I like being around mortals. It’s what I’ve done for centuries. Show up, talk my way into a normal life, fake my own death before anyone notices I don’t age properly. Hide out for a few decades, go home, see Father. Do it all again.”

There’s a familiar cave in the rock face. You know where you are now. You adjust your course. It’s not far now.

The birds sing your name.

Marcus is quiet. “So back there–”

“Thor, god of thunder, son of Odin.”

“Oh, thank god. I thought you killed just, some random kids.”

“What? No.” You finally turn to look at him. His eyebrows are pulled together in thought, but he doesn’t seem terribly shocked. “They were grown ass men. I was ten and got lucky.”

Marcus hums. “Talented kid, you were.”

That drags a smile to your face. “You’ve got no idea.”

The smell of woodsmoke on the wind hits you. It smells like home. Like safety.

The clearing is exactly the same. The remnants of Mother’s garden are still in bloom, carefully tended. The house is showing its age, but a curl of smoke from the roof dispels your anxieties. Suddenly you’re a child again, coming home from a too-long ramble in the wilds.

Father is splitting wood with the Leviathan axe. He looks up and meets your eyes. The hard edges of his face soften.

You hop the fence and cross the garden in a few strides. “I’m home,” you say, because what else can you say.

Father sets the axe aside and pulls you in. “Good,” he says. “You’ve been gone too long.”

Even grown, you’re still a twig compared to him. It used to ruffle you - you’re half Jotunn and half Spartan. You thought you should be taller by now.

Father tenses and lets you go. You follow his gaze and see Marcus, shifting uncomfortably, not quite knowing what to look at. “This is Marcus,” you say. “Marcus, uh. My father.”

“You should not have brought a mortal here,” Father says quietly.

“Desperate times, actually.” You rock back on your heels a little. “Is Mimir inside? I’m calling a family meeting.”

Father eyes you carefully. It strikes you that he looks… old. There’s far more grey in his beard than you remember, and when he picks up the axe its with a stiffness you don’t recognize. You pretend to ignore the unease it sets off in your stomach.

“What’s happened?” he asks, cautious as ever.

“It’s a long story. Marcus is involved. Can we, I don’t know, talk inside?”

Father turns and heads for the house. You take that as a yes and motion for Marcus to follow, plucking Honoria’s package from his hands when he gets close enough.

The house looks the same from the inside. Animal hides, thatched roof above the rafters, bundles of herbs drying, the Talon bow hanging unstrung and spotless over the bed that used to be yours. Embers softly glowing in the firepit send shivering waves of heat over the thorn-scratched skin on your arms.

Father sets the axe against the wall. It’s only then you notice Mimir, eyes closed, hanging by the rope from a hook in the wall. “Is he okay?” you ask, which is a stupid question because Mimir is a reanimated head.

“Is he okay,” Marcus echoes, a little high-pitched. “Is he fucking _okay -_  is that a decapitated head?”

“Yeah, that’s Mimir.”

“He sleeps,” Father says and lifts Mimir off the hook. “Head. Atreus has returned.”

At first you wonder if Mimir will respond, but then the eyelids flicker and rise, familiar gold eyes finding you. “Hmh. Ah, so he is,” Mimir says, creaky as the floorboards. “Been away too long, lad.”

“Hi, Mimir,” you say, and without stopping, “what do you know about Ragnarok?”

Mimir rolls his eyes. “Kratos, this boy of yours has your sense of manners, doesn’t he?”

“Answer the question, Head,” Father says impassively. You don’t miss the way he glances at you, taken as off guard by your question as Mimir had been.

“I feel that we’ve had this conversation before?” Mimir says. “That is, oh, some thousand years ago?”

You pinch the bridge of your nose. “Refresh my memory, then.”

Mimir pauses, apparently to gather his thoughts. “Well, according to prophecy, Ragnarok is the final battle between the gods of Asgard and Fenrir the World-Eater. Currently, Fenrir’s paws are being kept off Midgard by five so-called Chains. Every prophecy calls them something different; sometimes they’re enchantments, sometimes they’re omens. There's one old poem that calls them seals. When all five are broken, Fenrir is freed and the gods do battle. And according to all those prophecies, they’ll lose.”

You nod along to the parts you remember. “One was the death of Baldur. The next was Fimbulwinter.”

“Aye,” Mimir confirms. “The others I don’t know. Odin doesn’t especially like to think about his own demise, so he keeps the omens as secret as he can.”

You sigh and, more out of habit than anything else, pick up a log from the woodpile and thrust it into the dying embers. “So we don’t know what’s going to happen next,” you say, trying not to sound defeated.

“Well, they’ve left us alone for this long,” Mimir says. “I doubt–”

“They didn’t, though,” Marcus says, a little too fast, a little too abrupt. You realize you’ve sort of shut him out of the conversation and feel vaguely guilty. Be silent, mortal, the gods are talking. “They came after him in Germany.”

You shoot a glare his way. You’d been working up to that.

Father sets Mimir down on the table and turns the full force of his gaze on you. “Did they.” It’s not a question.

You shift uncomfortably. “Thor showed up looking for me,” you admit. “No one else, though.”

“What’d he say?” Mimir prompts.

“Oh, the usual. Imminent death and destruction, the coming of Ragnarok, I’ll perish in agony. Normal god shit. Got a mild concussion.” You shrug a little.

Father’s gold eyes darken.

“Did he try to kill you or capture you?” Mimir asks, ever pragmatic.

“I don’t know. I ran the first chance I got.”

“Does he know you are here.” Also not a question.

You spread your hands uselessly. “Where else would I go?”

The corners of Father’s eyes crinkle a little at that, but he still stares you down severely. “Then we shall leave in the morning.”

He takes the Leviathan Axe in one hand and a whetstone in the other, sits on his bed, and starts to sharpen it. His tone says that’s the last of the matter.

You take an instinctive step after him. “Leave for where?” You know you sound pestering. You don’t care.

Father says nothing. The grind of the whetstone grates on your ears.

Marcus finally speaks again. “I don’t know what the fuck is happening,” he says to Mimir on the table.

“Aye. These two have that effect on folk.”

“So, the, uh. The fact that you’re a talking head. What’s up with that.”

“Well, I _had_ a body.” Mimir sounds almost offended. “The fact that you’re mortal? That’s far more interesting.”

“Yeah, I’ve gathered that.”

“You know the boy?”

“We fuck sometimes,” says Marcus, calm as a summer day. You cringe a little.

“Ah.” There’s a beat of silence. “So biblically.”

You grind your teeth and snatch up the Talon bow from its place above your bed. The weight feels comfortable and familiar, and your hand settles easily into the worn wood. “Speaking of,” you say loudly to Father, hoping to change the subject, “remember how you always said that cult of the Nazarene would die out sooner or later? Yeah, I’ve got some news about that you’re going to _hate.”_

Father grunts in reply, not taking his eyes off the axe.

You scoop up Honoria’s package from the bed next to you and toss it his way. “I called in a favor from a friend,” you say. “She works in Greece, dug up a formula for blood mead.”

Father catches it in one hand and tears it open as you talk. The vial inside isn’t much, but Father uncorks it and sniffs and you’re pleased to see a hint of approval in his stony face. “Acidic enough,” he says, which you take to mean it’s a decent recreation.

Your heart swells and you try viciously to hide how much his mild approval means to you.

“Your friend knows her history.”

You don’t miss the way he emphasizes friend, or the way his eyes shift to Marcus, still standing by the door.

He should have expected this. What, did he think you’d be content to stay alone for centuries on end? Even gods need company. He knows that better than you. “It’s not like that,” you say quietly, hoping he won’t start lecturing you.

Father doesn’t even look at you. “Is he a pet or a plaything?”

Your face goes hot. “Neither,” you snap, a little too defensively.

“Plaything, then.” He runs a hand over the blade of the axe, seemingly satisfied with the sharpness.

You can’t find words, so you grind your teeth and let it go. You’ll smooth things over with Marcus later, but for the moment you can’t even bring yourself to look up at his reaction. Father isn’t even wrong, and that gets at you more than anything. You took up with Marcus out of boredom, and because he admired you, and because you like to be admired. You don’t love him. You hardly know him. He’s - he _is_ a plaything.

Mimir breaks the tense silence. “If the Aesir are looking for Atreus, they’ll come looking here.”

“I’d like to know why they want him,” says Father.

“Yeah,” you say, grateful for the change of subject. “Do you think Freya would tell us what she knows about Ragnarok?”

“No,” Father says with finality. “She has made her feelings toward us clear. We will not approach her.”

“Wise, brother,” says Mimir. “Freya’s a powerful enemy we don’t need. The fewer gods coming after us, the better.”

“Jormungandr, then,” you suggest. “He’s got to know something. He’ll talk to me.”

“Then we shall go to the lake in the morning and see if he knows more of these omens.” Father sets the axe down against the wall.

Implications about your sex life aside, you do feel more at ease. You’ve missed being home. You’ve missed Mimir’s rambling, the bow still in your hands, Mother’s garden, your childhood home, and your father. Hearing his decisive plans melts away tension in your shoulders you hadn’t known was there.

Outside, the sun sets.

~

_Mother cups your cheek and hisses in sympathy. She thinks you’re asleep. She thinks a great many things that you’ll never fathom, but right now she’s thinking about you, and that coils something tight and painful in your chest like a viper._

_“His fever is rising,” says Faye._

_Father stands in the doorway, hulking frame silhouetted by the setting sun. He says nothing._

_“The remedies aren’t working,” Faye goes on. Her hand on your cheek trembles. “Kratos.”_

_Father comes to stand by her side. Rough hands pull Mother’s away. “He will live,” Father says. Prays, perhaps. The world is blurry-bright and the heat from the fire does nothing but make the sweat break out on your forehead again. You think about the snow outside._

_“Come.” Father guides Faye from your bedside and you don’t want her to go, it feels like if she leaves you now you’ll never see her again._

_They go outside and you can hear nothing more but the roaring of the fire, or perhaps it's the blood rushing in your ears._

_It’s hot. It’s hot and you’re sure you’re dying but Mother won’t tell you. It’s snowing outside. The wind slithers around the house like a coiling snake. You can feel it constricting._

_Mother sounds angry and sad, somewhere outside. Maybe because of the snow. You should go look for her. Make her feel better. You can always make Mother smile._

_Your bare feet touch the floor before you’re aware you’re upright. Let the dizziness recede. It’s hot. There’s snow outside. Mother’s outside._

_You take a step and wonder what Mimir would say. He’s not on the side table. He’s probably outside with Mother and Father. You take another step._

_The fire snarls. The ground tilts and you see glowing coals come up to meet you._

_Oh, you remember as you fall. That’s right. This is where the scar on your cheek comes from._

_The fire roars._

~

You wake all at once, bolting to your feet in a dizzy rush, stumbling over uneven floorboards. Something horribly familiar bubbles up in your chest.

“Atreus?”

You cough. You don’t stop.

“Atreus!”

Somewhere between the taste of blood and the choking gasps for air, you struggle blindly in the direction of Father’s voice. Fear, overwhelming, childish fear washes over you. The hacking shakes you until you see stars.

Father’s hands grab you by the shoulders and ease you to your knees. “Breathe,” he orders, but the golden eyes in the dark are wide and worried.

You try to obey. Your heart flutters in your chest. The air won’t come. All you can taste is blood.

Suddenly you’re ten years old again and scared to die.

Vaguely, you can hear Marcus, and vaguer still, Mimir, but Father’s hands grip your shoulders so hard it hurts and you’re grateful.

“Breathe, boy!”

Something finally, finally gives way, and you suck in a full breath that makes you lightheaded. You’re conscious of the blood in your mouth, on your lips, but for the time being, all you can do is gasp one breath after another, coughing in between. Father’s hands ease on your shoulders, then let go.

You plant a shaking hand to the boards beneath you. They’re slick with blood and spit. Marcus comes from nowhere to slip an arm around you and make sure you don’t collapse.

Father crosses the room in two strides and takes Mimir from the shelf. “What does this mean?” he asks without really asking.

Mimir’s eyes shine through the firelight. “I’ve no idea.”

“The sickness is behind him. Long past.”

“Oh, clearly.”

“Do not test me!” Father bellows. It seems like it shakes the house. “We should have seen the last of this.”

“Let’s hope we have,” Mimir says grimly. He looks at you as directly as he can, dangling from Father’s fist. “You all right, laddie?”

You nod, not trusting your voice. You’ve mostly got your breath back, but the fear stays, paralyzing.

Father comes back to your side and passes Mimir to Marcus. Marcus makes a face you’re glad Father doesn’t see, but he takes the rope and holds Mimir far from himself. Father sets a rough palm on your cheek and tilts your face until your eyes meet his. He doesn’t speak for a while. You wonder if he’s seized with the same gut-wrenching panic that’s seized you. You wonder if he’s also suddenly found himself a thousand years younger.

“Can you stand?”

You nod and he backs off. You stumble to your feet and immediately sit heavily back on the bed. The room spins once, violently, then stabilizes. Your chest hurts.

Marcus appears with a wetted rag and swipes gently at your mouth. He’s wide-eyed but matter-of-fact about it. You guess this isn’t the strangest thing he’s seen today. You close your eyes and let him wipe away the blood.

Some moments or minutes later, the cool rag vanishes and you open your eyes to see Father offer you a cup of something that steams. Dogmint.

“I’m not sick.” You make no move to take it.

“Drink.”

It isn’t a request. You take it. The heat spreads through your fingertips. You take a careful sip. It tastes like bad memories.

“Could be another Omen,” Mimir offers to break the silence. “Ay, mortal - turn me back ‘round.”

Marcus carefully rotates Mimir’s head back to face you.

“An Omen,” Father repeats.

“It’s possible. I don’t know all of them. T'wouldn’t surprise me if there’s one I don’t recognize.”

“It’s been a thousand years,” you say. Your voice sounds ragged. “Why now?”

Nobody answers.

You shut up and drink the tea.

“These Omens,” Father finally says. “What happens after them?”

“Ragnarok,” Mimir says simply. “Each Omen delivered breaks a fiber in the rope keeping Fenrir’s paws off this realm. When he’s set free, the gods fight him and lose. So the stories go.”

“You know nothing more?” Father’s eyes are dark and cold.

“I've told you all I know. Odin was fairly tight-lipped about the event. You’d need a prophet to tell you more.”

“The prophets are all dead,” you say around the blood in your mouth. No one’s listened to mortal prophets in ages.

“Prophets don’t die, lad. Not the real ones. They’re reborn.” Mimir pauses. “And you’ll hate me for bringing this up, but, brother. The Nine.”

Father goes very still.

“The Aesir?” you repeat. “I’m not sure if you remember, Mimir, but. They hate us.”

“Not those Nine.” Mimir watches your father closely. “The Greek Nine. The Muses.”

“The Muses are gone.” Father’s voice is hard as a stone.

“Hardly. Anywhere the mortals make their art, you’ll find Muses. Any one of them will do, if they’ll deign to help.”

“So how do we find a Muse?” you rasp.

“Drink your tea and be silent,” Father says.

Mimir answers you anyway. “Jormungandr might know. They’ll all be in Midgard, and we only need to find one.”

Honoria could probably tell you more. You wish your phone still worked. You nudge Marcus. “Give me your phone.”

He looks at you like you’ve just grown a third eye. “My… phone?”

“Yes. Give it.”

“It’s dead, but okay.”

“Fuck. Nevermind.” You pull a pelt around your shoulders and shiver, then hope no one notices.

Father puts another log on the fire anyway. “Then, as planned, we will go to the Lake of Nine at dawn.” He sits back on his own bed and takes the Talon Bow from its place by yours.

“What time is it now?” you ask no one in particular.

“Barely midnight,” says Marcus, glancing at his watch. “Go back to sleep.”

Oh, like hell you’re going back to sleep. You sip the tea and let it drown out the taste of blood. Dogmint has been extinct for centuries now, everywhere but in Mother’s garden outside.

Marcus sets Mimir back down on the side table and then comes to sit on the bed next to you.

It hits you that you’d give a great deal to know what he’s thinking.

You aren’t used to your lovers being terribly important to you. It’s been your way for decades. Sure, you had your share of drunk coeds in bar bathrooms, but more often they’d try to pursue you, and you just… lost interest. A wanderer at heart, Mimir’s called you more than once, and not always affectionately. You can't help that they're drawn to you. Or so you've rationalized it to yourself for years on end.

But you haven’t kept those walls up. Not with Marcus. How can you? He’s sitting on the bed you were born in. Doesn’t get much more intimate than that.

Marcus seems to pick up on your reluctance and kneads your shoulder reassuringly. “So what do the Muses know?” he asks your father.

Father hums, rubbing the Talon Bow with an oiled rag. “The Muses know their arts in entirety, from beginning to end.” The words sound like they’re dragged from him one by one. “Each of them is allowed glimpses of the future as far as her art is concerned.”

“Glimpses, my decomposing left arse cheek,” Mimir says. “The Muses are prophetesses of the highest regard. She of Song, Euterpe - I met her once. Wild woman. Excellent tongue. She smelled nice, too, strange for Greek women…”

“Head.”

“She could sing every song that’s ever been written,” Mimir goes on. “And every one that’ll ever come into being. She knows them all. She was a seer in her own right, albeit in a roundabout way.”

“Fortune telling through song?” You raise an eyebrow.

“You’d be amazed what mortals will see fit to write songs about.”

“Already am. Music is terrible these days.” Between Mimir’s familiar rambling and Marcus’s careful hands kneading the tension out of your shoulders, you’re… actually tired again. The fear is dissolving into safety and security. “Do you think Freya still lives near the lake?”

“She does not concern us,” Father says in the voice he uses when he wants you to stop asking questions. It rarely works, and you want to press further, but the pelt around your shoulders feels heavy, urging you down into the blankets. You give up and let your eyes close, leaning into Marcus’s steady hands.

Minutes tick past and Marcus’s hands go from firm to gentle, tracing little circles on your skin, lulling you further towards sleep.

You’re halfway under, the crackling of the fire blending into a dream, when Mimir speaks, so quietly you hardly notice it. “This’ll not end well, brother.”

“I know,” says Kratos.

“What do you mean?” Marcus cuts in, voice vibrating against your ear. You realize, very distantly, that you must have fallen asleep on his chest.

“That’s none of your concern, mortal.” Father spits the word like a curse and you feel Marcus stiffen beside you.

“Hey. Fuck you. I think I deserve a little explanation.”

He doesn’t sound scared. He doesn’t even sound nervous. Most people are, around your father. He radiates danger. Marcus mostly just sounds annoyed.

You make a vague noise against his neck, not quite awake enough to bother with words. They both fall silent.

Mimir breaks the quiet again, much softer. “He deserves to know.”

“He deserves _nothing,”_ Father snaps.

You wait, but the silence descends and doesn’t break. You let Marcus’s gentle hands lull you into more troubled dreams.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> IN WHICH there is a close encounter, a lake, a murder, and a familiar face.

You wake in a sudden rush, like the magic and godhood in your blood all boiled at once. You start upright before your eyes are even open.

Magic prickles the hair on your arms. Magic hisses in the planks of the floor. Magic growls and murmurs in the fire.

Across the room, Father’s already on his feet, hand outstretched. The Leviathan axe flies to him, obedient like only an ancient weapon can be. Marcus is blinking in confusion, still in bed.

“What is that,” you say. It’s not a question. Father doesn’t answer it.

Thunder rumbles far away.

“Fuck,” you say, and grab your bow, on Father’s heels as you both rush for the door.

It’s like the vision you had so many years ago, with your mother’s ashes still dust on your palms. Thor stands just beyond Mother’s garden, hammer in hand. How he found you, you don’t know. You don’t care. You won’t lose again. Not with Father here.

The wind bites your face as you follow Father outside, arrow ready. You haven’t shot this bow in a long time, but you’re sure you haven’t forgotten how.

“Arrogant Loki,” Thor says by way of greeting. His gaze shifts from you to Father and his bearded face contorts in a sneer. “Ghost of Sparta.”

Father says nothing. His jaw is tight. Lightning strikes somewhere in the forest, close enough you can smell the sharp ozone. You draw an arrow and set it to the string.

“So be it,” Thor rumbles and throws Mjolnir.

You and Father split in different directions, the Leviathan axe whistling and your arrows raining one after another. Lightning strikes the axe right out of the air with a deafening crash and a cloud of smoke, and Thor snatches an arrow inches from his face and casts it aside. “Now that the pleasantries are out of the way,” he says, and the telltale whistle has you diving for cover as Mjolnir flies back. It hits the fence and the fence turns to sawdust.

“Why are you here?” Father asks, low enough that you can hardly hear him over the din of the gathering storm. Measured and controlled. He stalks Thor in a widening circle, making no effort to recall the axe that smokes in the grass.

“More importantly,” you butt in, “why are you here now?”

“For Ragnarok,” Thor snarls, a maddened grin splitting the beard. “For you, Loki.”

“Yeah, well,” you say, drawing another arrow almost casually, “I don’t like keeping appointments.” The bowstring sings.

Thor bats the arrow away with a swing of the hammer. “You cannot defeat what is already written!” he bellows. “The end is here. Fate has looked upon your kind and found you unworthy.”

“I disagree.” You fire off another arrow, still slowly circling opposite your father. If you can flank him without his noticing, if you can just distract him so Father can get in close…

The arrow sparks and sizzles as a static charge freezes it an inch from Thor’s forehead. He flicks it away. “Baldur was the beginning. You will be the end.”

“Baldur was a dick.” You fire off three more arrows in quick succession. Your quiver is running low, but you just have to keep his attention on you. “And so are you, it turns out.”

Rain finally starts to fall from the gathering clouds. Fog rolls up from the ground and you hiss the dirtiest curse you know. Your visibility is going to go fast. You count the arrows in your quiver with your fingertips, not taking your eyes off the man. Five more shots. You have to make them count.

 _Ljosta,_ you say to the bowstring as you set another arrow in place and draw. The arrow crackles with light and you let it loose.

Thor laughs and raises Mjolnir. The arrow freezes in midair, quivering with energy, sparking with light.

Then it turns and flies back at you.

You dive out of the way and stumble in the fog, blinking away rain. An instant for you to regain your balance. An instant too long. Thor rushes you, fast as a god, and you dive back to the ground as the hammer whistles over your head. You spring back up, but the rain makes the mud slick and you aren’t quite on your feet before the hammer catches you square in the chest.

Stars explode in your vision. You can feel at least three ribs break and it wrenches an unholy scream from your throat, but you don’t let the pain overwhelm you. You plant your palms on the ground and stagger back to your feet. If he hits you again you know you won’t survive it.

Thor raises the hammer again, but your father is faster. He comes from nowhere and crashes shoulder-first into Thor, sending them both a good twenty feet into the mud. Father gets a hand on Thor’s throat and you draw a painful, shuddering breath of relief.

Too soon. Thor throws your father off with a practiced twist and kick, recalling Mjolnir from where it lay in the mud. You reach for an arrow, but they must have fallen from the quiver when you fell, and your fingers find only empty air.

Father throws punch after powerful punch, each landing true. Thor tries to swing the hammer, but Father stays too close to him, raining down blows, keeping Thor on the defensive. You run for the Leviathan Axe in the mud, and let loose a piercing whistle that rings out over the thunder.

The forest erupts in cacophony. Every bird that can hear you soars up and they rain down on Thor, beating wings and sharp beaks doing what they can to draw his attention away from your father. Packs of baying wolves stream from the tree line, running with a half-dozen stags with their antlers down. You heft the axe. You might not have your father’s strength, but you’re never defenseless.

Lightning strikes again, a foot to your left. Standing still isn’t an option, but your broken ribs shriek in protest as you try to get moving. With the dregs of your energy, you lift the axe and throw it.

Thor’s hammer finally hits your father across the jaw, forcing him back a few steps, and then he points it at the axe. Lightning crashes down again, knocking it out of the air. It clatters back to the mud, smoking.

Broken in half.

The wolves finally reach Thor and take a good chunk out of his arm when he puts his guard up. He roars at them, but they roar back in a chorus.

“Fate is coming for you!” he howls, foaming with rage, rain streaming down his beard. “Odin will have you both!”

“Fate is bullshit,” you try to say, but it comes out as a wheeze. You try to breathe. The broken axe lies in the mud, steaming in the rain. You hope to Hel and back that Marcus has the sense to stay inside.

Thor bares his teeth, gleaming in the matted mess of his beard, and then lightning strikes and he’s gone.

The summoned beasts slink back to the trees as the rain slows. You pant for breath after painful breath and flip off the receding storm clouds.

Father’s at your shoulder. He isn’t even breathing hard. “Atreus. Look at me.”

You realize you’ve got one arm wrapped around your chest, as if to hold yourself together, like the pain might shake you apart. “It’s fine,” you wheeze.

“Let me see.”

“I said it’s _fine._ Need to talk to Mimir. Why does Odin want you?”

“I’ll ask Odin when I see him,” Father says before unceremoniously dragging your soaking shirt off. Seeing the blooming bruises on your chest make you lightheaded, but you distract yourself by doing what you do best; making an absolute nuisance of yourself.

“Odin doesn’t have any reason to take you,” you ramble as your father half-carries you back to the house. “Me, sure, why not, I’m apparently in every fucking prophecy they made, I have Jotunn blood, I get it, but they don’t have any reason to want _you_.”

“We shall ask the Serpent,” Father says, though you suspect he’s just trying to get you to shut up.

“Great! Let’s go.” You make a halfhearted attempt for the river, where the boat bobs on the swollen current.

Father holds firm. “At dawn.”

You cave and let him help you back into the house.

Marcus had the sense to stay indoors, but he’s on you the second the door opens. “Was that–”

“Yeah,” you say before he can finish. “He’s gone. For now.”

“What’d he say?” Mimir asks, eyes gleaming through the dark. But then you step into the firelight and he hisses in sympathy. “Ah, lad. Took a hit from Mjolnir, did you?”

“’s fine. Broken ribs. Nothing that won’t heal by morning.” You try to sound confident even though you doubt your own words. “Mjolnir’s overrated.”

“You’d be dead if you were mortal,” Father says sharply. “Thor killed Giants. He is not to be underestimated.”

“I agree,” Mimir says. “If Thor were trying to kill either of you, you’d be long dead. No question of that. Now, what did he want?”

“Same as before, I think.” You hold still while Father starts to bind your broken ribs with a length of cloth. “Bringing us to Odin. Spouting off about Ragnarok.”

Mimir falls silent, but you recognize it as his Thinking Silence and don’t interrupt it. Instead, you look to face Marcus. “You need to get out of here. I’m serious,” you cut him off as he opens his mouth to interrupt. “Get on a plane and get to Greece. No gods there. They won’t look for you.”

Father speaks from behind you. “Unless he is who Thor seeks.”

“I… what?”

“Could be,” Mimir says thoughtfully. “Whatever Odin wants from you, he knows you won’t give it willingly. Perhaps he wants leverage on you. And - don’t take this the wrong way, Kratos - the plaything would be a sight easier to capture than your father.”

“I have a name,” Marcus complains.

“That’s why he’d be better off as far away from here as he can get,” you point out.

“On the contrary, I think it’d be better for him to stay. No place more safe than between the two of you.”

Marcus raises his eyebrows at you. “The decapitated head makes a lot of sense.”

You wait for Father to weigh in, but he just ties the cloth tight and taps your shoulder to let you know he’s done. You tug your shirt back on, wincing as the movement shifts your damaged ribcage and hoping it heals up by morning. “Fine,” you say when it becomes clear your father won’t make this decision for you. “But please stop calling him plaything, Mimir, that’s just rude.”

“But true,” Mimir fires back, smug.

The sky lightens. None of you go back to sleep.

~

You tried to pawn off grading papers on your teaching assistant whenever you can, but the university pulled your TA for the semester, citing student complaints about your teaching style. They had a point. For a few semesters you’d just sort of clicked through powerpoints slide by slide without a word with one hand, the other scrolling through your email for the results of that digsite in Japan. You’d be the first to admit you got more research than teaching done, but you still managed to convince administration that you were valuable enough to get tenure. You hadn’t earned the nickname Silvertongue for only your bedroom talents, after all.

So you’d been in your office, a room the size of a twin bed, cursing at every god you can think of as you squinted at an essay on your computer screen.

“It’s not that bad,” Honoria said on speakerphone. “Your students aren’t idiots. You’re just a huge asshole.”

“Thanks.” You leaned closer to the screen, like that’d help. “And I’m pretty sure they’re idiots. I can translate any goddamn language on the planet, but Harriet… Boddard? Is that even a real name?”

“It is.”

“Whatever. I can’t read this garbage. I want my TA back.”

“Harriet Boddard was your TA, you fucking dipshit.”

“What? No, my TA was that white boy, remember, the one I kept saying I’d have his babies.”

“That was Harriet Boddard.” Honoria sounded tired. “She was the super butch French lesbian. You’re an asshole and an idiot.”

“Whys she in my class again?”

“You failed her last year cause she refused to go out with you. Did you seriously think she was a dude all along?”

“Look. Look. I’m not a fucking mind reader. I’m a simple man. I see some hot twink, I hit on some hot twink.”

“It’s cute that you think you don’t qualify as a twink.”

Then someone knocked on your door, which had startled you into five seconds of stunned silence. “Honoria,” you said.

“What.”

“Someone knocked on my door.”

“Open it, fucker.”

The door swung open on its own. The face that appeared behind it was curious and a little apprehensive. “Professor Vanir?” he said. His voice was gentle and sounded like birdsong.

You blinked. “Y….es.”

“Oh. There wasn’t a sign, so I wasn’t sure.”

“Yeah. That’s. That’s by design. Who are you?”

“Oh. I’m, I’m Marcus Sellworth. I’m in your, uh, Scandinavian Studies class.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.” You looked him up and down. He was slender and willowy, golden-skinned, dark-haired, eyes wide and green as a rainforest. Fuckable, you decided.

“I, uh, sit in the front? Every lecture. I just had some, some questions about the syllabus.” Bright green eyes darted down over you. In a movement so small you could have missed it, his teeth find his lower lip.

“The syllabus,” you repeated, leaning back in the chair and smoothly hanging up on Honoria. You knew she’d butt in at the worst possible time. “What about it?”

Marcus’s tongue darted out to wet pink lips. Oh, you’re weak. “Yeah. It, uh, says the research paper on dialect drift between Norse and Celtic runes is due by the end of November, but it has us studying dialect drift through the start of December?”

“Huh.” You hadn't changed the syllabus in three years. “That’s not right. I usually have a TA do the syllabus.” It’s not an apology. You rarely apologize for anything. It’s a point of pride for you.

“Oh. Right, yeah. Harriet.”

“I’ll revise it,” you said, doing your best to sound bored. “The paper will be due after the dialect drift unit. Same day as the exam.” You minimized Harriet’s essay and pulled up your email. The Nepalese digsite director finally emailed you. There’s so many photo attachments it felt like Christmas. (Though you hate Christmas for so many reasons.)

Marcus leaned forward a little, so slightly you doubted he realized he was doing it. “Is… sorry, is that Dr. Reacher’s… uh, digsite?”

“Are you reading my email over my shoulder?” you said without looking up from the screen.

“…….yes?”

“Then you can see it’s Dr. Reacher.”

Marcus hovered a little. He was eager to please, but not too eager. Oh, he’d be fun. “I didn’t know he sent you updates from Nepal.” He wanted you to know how engaged he was in academic research without kissing your ass. You liked that.

“He has some possible cuneiform he wants me to look at.” You couldn’t help but preen a little as he realized.

“Oh. _Oh._ You can translate cuneiform?”

“I can translate anything.” After a pause, you amended. “Well, given enough time.”

“I guess they didn’t give you tenure for your teaching.”

“Nope.” You finally looked up at him through your lashes and gave him the heartbreaker smirk.

Finally, something new to play with.

~

The bowstring feels tight and secure, but you restring it anyway, just to give your hands something to do. The dawning sun glints on the river, making you squint.

The boat isn’t built for three grown men, but you and Marcus are both what Honoria once affectionately called “Tupperware twinks,” so you hope it’ll manage. It tilts a little dangerously from time to time.

The birds still sing your name. A wren swoops down to perch on the boat’s bow and cocks her head at you, bright eye shining in the sunrise. Your mind reaches for hers and your surprised by how easily it comes. You haven’t stretched your communing muscles in ages - not since your brief stint as a pet therapist in the 90s.

 _Loki,_ she says brightly, and it comes out as a song. You smile and tell her, gently, that you’re glad to see her. She sings about her nest and her eggs and her two bright-eyed hatchlings. You listen patiently and then tell her you’re happy for her, that the forest will be better for her presence and her songs. She radiates joy as she flies back to the trees.

You can feel everyone’s eyes on you, but you take a moment to just bask in the simple joy of making a songbird happy. Then: “She wanted to say hello.”

Marcus tilts his head at you, then looks back to the trees. “You can… talk to animals?”

“Only if they want to be talked to.” You shrug it off. Even now you aren’t sure how to explain everything you do. Maybe it’s your godhood, maybe it’s your humanity. You’ve long since given up trying to figure it all out.

~

You kept dogs for a while. Cats, too, but not as many. Dogs loved you fiercely and effortlessly. Cats loved you distantly, quietly, devotedly. Horses loved you painstakingly and carefully. Snakes loved you like the Leviathan Axe; with few emotions, but they always knew your hands were home.

You got tired of watching them love you and die, though. When you couldn’t remember all the names of the ones you’d kept, you stopped taking them in. But you’d always sit by a lonely dog on the street, listen to their stories of heartbreak and hardship, and you would offer what words of comfort you could. Then you would tell them how to be safe and where to go for help, and you would go on your way.

When you were young and watched your father cut down ravening wolves, he’d given you advice in that hardened way he had. _Close your heart to it._

Perhaps you learned that lesson too well.

~

The sky shudders a little and Marcus looks up. “Are we going the right way?” he asks.

“Pretty sure. Why?” You follow his gaze, but the sky is clear and blue and empty.

“I don’t think we’re going the right way,” he insists.

“The magic's meant to keep mortals out,” Mimir says, his first words since you’d all boarded. “It will pass.”

Marcus fidgets, clearly uncomfortable and not quite sure why. The glamour shield is thick and strong, and it makes the hair on your arms prickle, but the boat passes through it in minutes and the river widens.

The sky shudders in a very different way and Father’s hands pause on the oars. You know him too well not to recognize what it means.

“What’s wrong?” you say, tightening your grip on the Talon Bow. You listen to the trees and the wind and the lapping water, but you can’t hear a thing.

“Trouble.” Father’s cold eyes scan the waterline.

It hits you that the birds aren’t singing anymore. The dead quiet unsettles you.

The water ripples gently from nowhere.

You don’t get any other warning before the river drops out from under you.

All three of you manage to stay in the boat as it rocks and dives, but the riverbanks suddenly loom over you and the water roars as it vanishes to somewhere. Over the rushing noise you can hear a bellow.

The boat scrapes the near-empty riverbed and Father’s leapt out of it before you can even release your white-knuckle grip on the bow. “What the hell was that?” Marcus says somewhere behind you.

“Someone’s called the Serpent,” Mimir says from Father's belt.

“No,” you counter, bounding out into the mud to follow your father. “River’s never dropped this low before.”

The sky shudders and you can hear it as much as you feel it, a low thrum that hurts your ears, a concussion of air that reminds you of dragon wings.

Father looks back at you, face set in familiar grim determination. “The Serpent is fighting.”

Jormungandr. Sudden panic seizes you and you don’t know why.

You draw an arrow and run.

Father follows.

~

Your experience with the Jotunn language progressed slower than the mortal ones, but even as you grappled with the strange breath movements and unfamiliar consonants, it opened your soul like a blossoming flower. When you were seventeen, you could almost carry on a clumsy conversation with the World Serpent as he sat in the lake, crusted with clams and moss. He would sit patiently, enormous eyes on you, and reply slow and thoughtful in a rasping roar that shook the whole valley.

Wandering the world made you miss him. You found other wonders of the planet and its pantheons - the living sand in Kenya that spoke like an hourglass and told stories of everything buried beneath - pixies in the Ukraine that allowed you to see their caverns filled top to bottom with crystals and jewels - the lycanthropes of Siberia and their feral revelries - the island goddess in Oceania who disguised herself in grass and flowers and slept for centuries - the unresting burial mounds in America where the gods were dead and the dead became gods. But you never forgot Jormungandr, and you returned home to see him as much as you did to see your father.

The World Serpent was always pleased to see you. He never refused you a conversation. He never refused you advice. Only Mimir, perhaps, was ever more forthcoming with answers to your myriad questions.

He told you about Jotunheim and about the Giants themselves. He told you everything he knew about your mother.

You’d never thought to ask him about Ragnarok.

~

The riverbed is slick with scum and mud, so you vault up onto the bank and run. The air smells like algae and disturbed water. The atmosphere heaves with the force of something enormous moving very, very fast.

The lake is ahead, just through a last copse of trees. You don't slow down.

Jormungandr roars.

~

 _Did you ever meet her?_   you'd asked one day, eighteen years old and still clumsy with the words.

The Serpent rested his head on the surface of the lake, mossy beard drifting in the current. _Laufey the Just,_ he said, enunciating carefully. He wants you to know your mother's name in her own tongue. _Yes. She was powerful. She was good._

_Is that why the Aesir hated her so much?_

_Yes. They sought to conquer. Laufey sought to protect. They often clashed._

You'd fallen quiet for a while, fiddling with a smooth river stone. Then: _Why did she stop?_

 _She met a god and bore his son._ Jormungandr offers nothing else.

_The prophecies on Jotunheim spoke of me, you said next. What did they mean?_

_Laufey knew the prophecies._ The Serpent's eyes gleam, reflected in the smooth lake beneath.

You must have misspoke. _But what am I supposed to do?_

Jormungandr sank back, coiling his body into the lake. _You will know when you must know._

He'd answered no more of your questions that day.

~

The ground pitches violently enough to throw you off your feet. You go sprawling into a thicket, spring back upright, and the ground throws you off balance again almost immediately. It heaves and rolls under your feet and it's all you can do to stay standing.

Jormungandr bellows a word you don't recognize. You stagger the last few meters to the tree line. The Lake of Nine comes into full catastrophic view.

The World Serpent is fully out of the water for the first time since you met him, a thousand years ago. He drips with lake scum and moss, his body a writhing mass of muscle and scales, big as a city and twice as loud. His countless teeth are bared in a snarl, his coils surrounding Tyr's temple, alien eyes locked on the travel room.

~

The first time you'd found the travel room sealed, you were fifteen and had been trying to reach Alfheim. You'd argued with Father over something you don't remember anymore, stormed out of the house, taken the boat alone to the lake, crossed the bridge and found the doors shut.

You scowled and shoved at them with all your budding strength, but the stone faces loomed over you, apathetic and immovable.

"They're sealed," Sindri had called to you, making you jump.

"You're here?" you asked. "I thought you both left during Fimbulwinter."

"We did," Sindri said. "We tried getting off Midgard, but all the usual routes are closed to us."

You swore and kicked the doors fruitlessly.

"That ain't gonna get 'em open," Brok said, appearing from behind a column, arms crossed, hammer in hand. "They're shut tighter than Freya's thighs. Bifrost or no Bifrost, no one's gettin' inside."

You furrowed your brow and glared at the doors with as much venom as you could muster. The doors didn't react.

"Where's that da of yours?" Brok peered behind you.

"Not here."

"Aaah," Sindri drawled. "Trouble in the family?"

Instead of answering, you fired off another question at Brok. "Who sealed the travel room? And why?"

Brok shrugged. "Dunno. Don't care, neither."

You set your back to the stubborn doors and heaved a sigh, sliding down to the floor.

"And just _where_ did you plan on going, anyway?" Sindri eyed you shrewdly, the same way Mimir does when he's caught on to your bullshit.

"That's none of your concern." Of all the things you've learned from your father, that phrase has probably been the most useful.

"Oh-ho, but it is," Brok says. "Now, what d'you expect your da would do is he found out we let you go rummaging around in other realms unsupervised?"

"No point now." You gritted your teeth and tried to let the frustration go.

"Exactly," Brok grunted. "Now get yer bony ass off the floor and come eat something."

Hours later, as the sun waned, you went home. Father didn't ask where you'd been.

~

You run for the bridge at a dead sprint.

Static electricity crackles in your hair despite the cloudless sky and your heart pounds in your chest. Something about the lake feels _wrong wrong wrong_ and you can't shake it even as the rising sun crests the mountains and sparkles on the water far below.

Jormungandr bellows more words you can't catch - they bounce and echo in the bowl of the valley, reverberating in your skull, but you know him well enough to hear the rage in his roar. You reach the bridge and you can hear your father behind you, shouting, but you don't stop and you don't listen. A coil of the Serpent's gleaming skin comes crashing down on the bridge before you, taking out a huge chunk of stone, and you skid to a brief halt to keep from falling into the lake bed below. But the instant it's clear, you leap to the other edge, roll, jump back to your feet, and keep running.

Wild laughter booms over the lake and the roar of the Serpent. "Come on, you great ugly beast!" Thor bellows from somewhere up ahead. "Come down here and let me kill you!"

Fire catches in your chest. You should have known. Your ribs still ache but you force yourself to run faster. Father shouts your name from somewhere behind you. You don't turn around.

Jormungandr's enormous head snaps around to look. Gleaming eyes lock onto yours.

 _Leave this place!_ he roars.

"No!" you yell back.

The Serpent lunges for the travel room, coiling around the temple and constricting. Over the rushing water, you hear stone begin to crack.

_This fight is not yours!_

"Yes it _fucking_ is!" You vault a fallen column, then over a coil of Jormungandr's body. The travel room doors are there, shut as they've been for centuries, but starting to give way under the Serpent's crushing weight.

Then they burst outwards, showering you in chunks of stone and dust. You duck behind a piece of stonework and draw an arrow. Your ribs hurt. You rise up to look for a target.

A hand grabs the back of your neck and forces you back down. "Your recklessness will get us all killed," Father seethes into your ear.

"I don't care." You wrench away and stand up again, arrow to the string, ready to shoot whatever walks out of Tyr's temple. You'll face down all of Asgard's armies if you must. You won't let them kill Jormungandr.

Expecting to hear a sharp rebuke, you're taken off guard when the next thing you hear over the churning water below is rattling chains. Briefly bewildered, you spare a glance back at your father.

The Blades of Chaos are in his hands. He nods at you.

The way your chest tightens has little to do with your ribs.

"Fine!" Thor roars from somewhere in the temple. "We'll do this the way fate intended!"

You let an arrow fly into the darkness.

Thor laughs, wild and rough, and then Mjolnir comes flying from the broken doors. You dodge it and back up onto the bridge. You need to draw him out into the open, where your father and the World Serpent can have at him. "Can't you just go fuck yourself?" you shout at the dark temple.

Thor appears, streaked with dirt and eyes wild. Mjolnir returns to his hand as he walks, almost calmly. It reminds you of Baldur. A lot of things about him remind you of Baldur.

"Focus, boy," your father says, low and deadly.

"Your axe is gone," Thor says, apparently having not heard. "The beast is old. Your father is weak. You are leaving here with me, child."

You loose another arrow. Thor flicks it aside. "The seals will break," he snarls. "Fenrir will devour your realm. And Asgard will take the remnants."

"Learn your own fucking prophecies," you spit, taking a careful step back and drawing another arrow. "When Fenrir is set loose, he'll kill you. He'll kill everyone."

Thor roars with laughter. You fire the arrow, hoping to catch him off guard, but he strikes it away. Father readies the Blades and circles back towards the temple. If he can cut Thor's retreat off, you can both force him out onto the bridge. "Whose prophecies are you listening to?" Thor taunts. "The dead Fae my father kept?" He gestures at Mimir on your father's belt. "Addled minds ought not be trusted, boy."

The epithet makes your blood boil, but you keep your hands steady on the bow. "So, what, there's new prophecies?" you hiss, backing up another step. Father continues circling, slowly. He's almost between Thor and the temple.

Thor's teeth appear in his matted beard. "Odin may see fit to tell you, when I bring you before him. You will be broken and bleeding, your half-breed father dead, and your mortal toy will know every reason why Asgard has reigned supreme in the nine realms--"

Father whips the Blades in unison as you fire off another arrow. Thor dodges the Blades, but your arrow buries itself in his forearm. He roars and rushes you.

You unsheathe your knife and backpedal into the dawning sunlight, ducking the swing of Mjolnir by an inch. You can feel the static electricity crackle over your head as it whistles above you. You seize the chance and slip under his guard to bury the knife in his thigh, pulling it out before diving past him, rolling back to your feet alongside Father.

Thor howls and it's more satisfying than you'd admit.

Sparkling sunlight from the lake vanishes, blotted out as Jormungandr's giant head sinks down onto the bridge, trapping Thor between you. His jaws part and the sun glints off innumerable fangs.

 _Fool,_ he growls and it vibrates the bridge beneath your feet.

Thor looks first at him, then back at you and your father. Blood puddles around his boot. His breath hisses between his teeth. He's trapped, calculating his odds. He snaps the arrow you'd put in his forearm off at the head. Then he grins.

And he laughs.

And he points the hammer at you.

You hear the lightning strike before you feel it, an explosion of heat and pressure and a powerful smell like hot metal, like burning hair, like a fistful of hornets cast into your skull. The pain is white as a gravestone, like Fimbulwinter's ice, like draugr teeth, like a dragon's fangs and it lights up every nerve in your body until you could trace them like new tattoos on your skin. It hurts, it hurts and you can't see around the fog of it and you can't get up if you can't tell where the ground is, are you on the ground? Are you still standing? You don't know. It feels like the light of Alfheim again, pain so overwhelming it traps you inside. You stop thinking for a while.

It's the pressure on your cheek that finally brings you back around, sensation returning to your wrung-out nerves and sight to your whited-out vision. You cough and inhale dust - your face is against the stone of the bridge, scattered with wreckage, a blackened mark the size of a car marring the stone a few yards away. You push yourself up on trembling arms and stagger to your feet. Your knife is on the ground and you snatch it up.

Thor clings to Jormungandr's neck, bellowing like a mad bull as the Serpent tries to shake him off, rearing and spiraling to no avail. Coils of his body writhe below, churning the lake into foam. You look wildly around you on the bridge and spot your father through the mist, struggling to get back on his feet, fists locked tight on the Blades. "Father?" you call uncertainly.

"Go."

It's all the reassurance you need. You leap up to the edge of the bridge and jump for one of the Serpent's lashing coils. They're as big around as a house, but they're slick with algae and moving faster than you expect, and you spend a desperate few moments finding your footing before you can jump for the next one. You nearly lose your balance as Jormungandr bucks, but you drive your knife down into the Serpent's scales as deep as it'll go and hold on for dear life. You doubt he can even feel it. The instant the writhing coil settles a bit, you draw the knife out and leap again, working your way towards the battle raging on Jormungandr's neck, using the knife for balance when you have to.

Far above, Thor rears back with the hammer and strikes Jormungandr. The snake shrieks with a sound that shakes the valley and reels backwards. You dig the knife back under a massive scale and cling as the Serpent tries its best to crush Thor against the mountainside. Thor howls with laughter. "Be still and meet your gods!" he roars, and rears back to strike again.

You're too far away, you realize with dawning horror. You try to go faster.

Jormungandr screams as the hammer hits home once - twice - again and again. Through the froth and mist you can see Thor rise to his full height on the Serpent's head, bellowing with triumph, raising Mjolnir high.

The crack it makes when it falls is so loud you feel it in your chest. You scream with Jormungandr as Mjolnir strikes again, and blood falls on you like rain from above. Time seems to slow as the Serpent begins to fall.

And all you can do is watch.

Jormungandr collapses on the mountainside and it sounds like dreaded thunder as his weight crushes against it. Your vision goes red and you can taste bile in your throat but you can't let this happen you can't stand here and let him get away -

Pain, bright-searing and hot, lances up your arms as you scream, knife in hand, and you run, vaulting over the dying Serpent's body, because Thor is just standing there like he's won a game and you're going to burn the victory off his face -

Someone stands on the mountain, a figure in black -

Thor sees you and readies the hammer again, the hammer stained with blood and bits of bone and gray matter of your oldest friend, the last of his kind, of your kind, you'll burn him to ash from the legs up so he can scream the entire time -

The figure in black is suddenly between you and Thor, raising a wooden stake that lights up the valley brighter than the rising sun. "Asgard!" someone shouts, and there's a sound like a hundred trees breaking in a hurricane.

Then Thor is gone.

"No!" you scream at the empty air. The pain on your arms fades into a sharp throb. All that's left is a river of steaming blood running down the mountain from Jormungandr's motionless head.

You ignore the figure in black and run to the Serpent to confirm what you already know. He draws no breath. His eyes stare fixed and dilated at nothing. The ground below you is sodden with blood that just keeps coming.

"Atreus!" Father calls from further down the mountainside. You look back out of habit, and finally get a look at the figure in black.

Then you frown. "...Honoria?"

Dr. Honoria Reinhardt, professor of Greek History, stands in long sleeves and boots sunk half an inch into bloody soil, hand gripping a wooden stake, in front of you.

Father is heading your way, but you're at a loss. "What... what are you doing here?" is all you can think to ask.

Honoria's hand tightens on the wooden stake. "It's worse than any of us thought," she says, so quiet you can hardly hear over the rushing lake and your own pounding pulse. "You need me."

You waver a little. The smell of blood and salt and ozone is overwhelming. "Why?" you demand. "Who the fuck are you?"

Honoria looks you dead in the eye and something happens around her. You can't pin it down, it's some kind of magic, some kind of glamour you never sensed, but the hair on the back of your neck prickles and says magic. And you notice.

She looks familiar.

Sharp nose - sharp cheekbones - sharp chin and sharp eyes - the stake isn't a stake, it's a wooden flute, old and worn - soft brown hair that floats in the wind like a halo. She looks familiar. She looks like _Father._

You look back at him uncertainly and it shakes you to your core to see his face bone-white, eyes wide, hands gripping the Blades so tightly his knuckles are white. When he speaks, it's with a softness you haven't heard for a very, very long time.

"Calliope?"


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> IN WHICH there is a hurried explanation, a bag of frozen peas, shitty box wine, a handful of snow, and an unnecessarily large turtle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> has it rly been 7 months?? wack. anyway here's chapter 4.

“She hits like an asthmatic duck.”

“Yeah, well, so do you.” You check the freezer and curse yourself for not having refilled the ice cube trays earlier.

Honoria sits on your couch, scowling through a bloody nose. You throw a bag of frozen peas at her. “This is the best I’ve got.”

She rolls her eyes at you, but she takes the peas.

“So why did she hit you?” you ask, dropping a roll of paper towels in her lap and throwing yourself on the other sofa.

“Said some shit.”

“Which one of you said some shit.”

“Both. I guess.”

You shrug it off and turn on the Food Network. If she wants to talk, she’ll talk.

Ten seconds later: “The thing is, okay. Laconian Greek isn’t necessarily distinct from Doric Greek.”

You mute the tv and look at her in disappointment. “You fought a grad student. At an anthropology mixer. Over Greek dialects.”

“She’s like thirty, how was I supposed to know she was a grad student? She dresses like an art professor.”

You wait.

“But yes,” Honoria relents. She swipes angrily at her nose with a paper towel. “And Laconian is a _subset_ of Doric. It’s not its own thing. Just cause no one speaks it anymore but me doesn’t mean you can disrespect it like that.”

“Hah. Honoria speaks a dead language.”

“Yeah, fucker, and you speak how many?”

You consider that. “Define a dead language.”

“Nobody living’s native tongue.”

“Eleven.” It’s an acceptable number to tell people, you’ve found. In reality, you’ve lost track.

“Jesus Christ. How old are you?”

“I’m a mystery wrapped in an enigma and sprinkled with sexy.” You’ve gotten great at dodging that question. You keep forgetting what age you’re pretending to be these days. Outwardly, you think you can pass for twenty-three at the youngest and thirty-six at the oldest. You can shapeshift as it pleases you, but you like the way you look without magic. With Mother’s blue eyes shining and Father’s tense mouth looking out at you from the mirror, anywhere you wander can feel like home.

To distract both yourself and Honoria, you bound off the couch and head back to the kitchen. “Do you want shitty box wine? I’m getting some shitty box wine.”

“I’d love some shitty box wine.”

“Did Lutz say if you were fired or not?”

“I don’t think he saw. Someone hates fun and dragged me into an Uber before he got there.”

“You’re welcome.” You hand her a box of shitty wine.

“Aw. I don’t even get a glass?”

You offer her a straw.

“Vanir, you’re a fucking treasure.”

~

“You left Elysium in ashes,” she says to Father.

Father is motionless. You’ve never seen him like this. He looks lost. “I…” he begins, then stops.

“I was alone.” Her voice is hard as a stone. “I was alone again.”

“Calliope.” He sounds lost, too.

“No,” she bites out. “I have nothing else to say to you.”

“Time out.” You step in between, Jormungandr’s blood still dripping in syrupy streaks from your hands. “Time out. Who are you?” You turn on Father. “Who is she?”

He won’t meet your eyes.

“Father, who is she?” you shout. Your arms prickle with heat and pain.

“She is my firstborn.”

“The World Serpent’s death was the third Omen,” this girl says. She tucks the wooden flute into her back pocket and turns to look at Jormungandr’s cooling corpse. “I’d hoped to arrive in time. This was such a waste of life.”

Your mind feels blank. Reeling. “Her… She’s. She’s your…”

Father doesn’t take his eyes off her. “How are you alive?” he asks softly.

Honoria – Calliope – toes the Serpent’s scales. “I owe you neither explanation nor attention,” she says at the bloody soil. “There are bigger problems at hand.”

“There are not,” Father says. The Blades hand limp in his hands. _“Kopelia mou.”_

She straightens up like an undergrad slapped her ass. “If you say that to me again,” she says, sharp as a rose thorn, “I will leave, and you will never see me again. I am here to help, but I am not beholden to you.”

Mimir on Father’s belt finally speaks. “Are you a Muse, good lass?” he asks, polite as you’ve ever heard him. It strikes you that he might be afraid of her.

Honoria spares him a glance before turning her attention back to the Serpent’s head. His mouth hangs half-open in a death grimace. She pulls a hunting knife from nowhere. “I am. I wasn’t, always. But now I am.” She looks at Father, chin high, shoulders back. “Persephone’s death left power unclaimed. I took it and I left.”

“You know the Omens, then,” Mimir goes on carefully.

“I do.” She presses the knife to the edge of a rear fang. “Three of the five are fulfilled.”

“Ah. Remind me of the other two, if you’d be so kind?”

The tooth comes away with a sound like shucking an oyster, a wet sucking and muted crack. It sends gooseflesh prickling down your back. Calliope shuts the knife and puts it away. “Surtr,” she says simply. “Then the Calling.”

“Surtr,” you repeat. “The… the fire giant.” Your forearms burn. You finally look down at them. The skin there is angry red and welting like you’d thrust your arms elbow-deep in a fire.

Father appears beside you with a handful of snow. He presses it to your stinging arms, face carefully blank. The snow feels divine on your skin. You dimly recall seeing flames lick Father’s arms in the heat of battle. Spartan rage, Mimir called it. Weaponized anger. One of your father’s many curses for sins long past. You hadn't really thought you'd inherited it, but your blood and magic are always surprising you. Even now.

“The Calling?” Mimir prompts.

Calliope - Honoria - whatever, whoever she is, inspects the fang she’s pried from Jormungandr. It’s on the smaller side, as far as his teeth went; as long as a rapier, gleaming with blood and saliva. “The Calling of Loki.”

Dread curls in your gut, thick and roiling. “More fucking prophecies,” you say half under your breath, and you see the corner of Father’s mouth twitch downwards.

“What the Calling entails is never made clear,” Calliope continues. “But I think we’d all rather avoid it.”

“Is _that_ why you hunted me down?” you manage to spit out past the reeling in your head. “Is that - is that the only reason anyone takes an interest in me? Prophecies and destiny and all that, that bullshit?”

Calliope starts to speak, but you’ve started and you can’t stop. “No, no, I’m sick of it, I’m sick of being used. You, Baldur, Magni and Modi and the entire, fucking pantheon, just because of dead giants and oracles’ drugged out ravings and I am tired of it! Don’t speak to me,” you snap, because Calliope’s face has turned hard and her shoulders rise like she’s about to start shouting and it hits you that you know her, you’ve known her for years as a mortal you like and she’s known the whole time, and it makes something ugly rear up in your mind and you give it voice before you can think better of it. “Don’t say a word. Don’t tell me we’re family. I don’t buy it. I don’t believe you _give_ a shit! I don’t think my mother gave a shit either, for all I know she raised me out of duty to some cave paintings and I don’t think _you–”_

You don’t get that far, because Father’s hand clamps like a vise on your singed wrist and twists you around hard to face him. “Do not,” he seethes, and you’ve seen your father angry and you’ve seen him hurt and you’ve seen him on fire with blind rage but you’ve never seen this, “do not ever, _ever_ speak of your mother in that way again.”

You open your mouth, probably to get yourself in deeper shit, but Father’s hand tightens dangerously. “You will respect your mother’s memory or I will make you. And you will not speak that way to my daughter, either, not ever again. Do you hear me?”

You’re silent for a moment and he pulls you closer, bending down to eye level. “I said, do you hear me, boy?”

“Yes,” you say like a sullen child. Maybe you still are.

Father releases you.

“I don’t need you to protect me,” Calliope says to him.

“I will have respect for my family,” Father says. It’s not an answer and Calliope seems to know it, but she lets it go.

You breathe, in and out, until the fire in your chest dies down. When you think you can speak again, you say, “So what now?”

Calliope puts the serpent fang away. You don’t see how or where it goes. One moment she’s holding it and the next her hands are empty. “We stop one or both of the remaining Omens.”

“Great. How.”

Father cuts in. “We get off Midgard.”

"The travel room is still sealed," you point out. "We probably can't even wake the World Tree anyway."

"You will to go Jotunheim and stay there until Thor is dead," Father goes on, as if you hadn't even spoken. "We will find a path there. We have done it before."

You meet his eyes and don't drop your gaze. "I won't stay there. You know I won't."

"It's a bad idea," Calliope puts in. "Don't leave Midgard, either of you." She doesn't elaborate.

Father seems to consider her for a long time, face unknowable. "I," he starts, then stops, then forges on again. "I am. Sorry that I left you."

Calliope's lip twitches in what you recognize as mockery. Honoria does that when you ask her something stupid and she's about to roast you over it. You can't reconcile her, your mortal friend who drank your shitty box wine and argued over Top Chef with you, with the stranger before you who looks far too much like your father. Sister. It feels alien even to think the word. "There's other prophecies," she says, directed at you. "Surtr's rampage will include a fight with the goddess Frigga, here on Midgard. I've been led to believe you know her."

You say nothing and keep your face carefully motionless.

"If we can find her, she might be an ally. And we might keep her from death."

You bark a short and humorless laugh. "She won't."

"We have to try."

Father looks back and forth between the two of you. Lost.

"You don't get it," you say. "Things... things ended badly between Freya and us. She won't work with us, not for anything. Not to save herself, not to save the entire realm, not even to piss off the Aesir."

"She's had time," Calliope insists. "The histories are fuzzy now, thanks to your interference" - she casts a look at Father that you try not to analyze - "but Baldur was always going to die, sooner or later. Freya knows that. She knows it better than anyone. She might still see reason."

"I thought you were a seer," you say, maybe a little petulantly. "This sounds a lot like guesswork."

"It's a long shot," Mimir finally pipes up from Father's belt. "But Freya might indeed have had enough of mourning. A thousand years must have cooled her anger somewhat."

"It will not." Father's voice is cold.

"You can't know that," you fire back.

Father regards you for a long moment, then Calliope. Silence ticks by. The steam from Jormungandr's blood fades in the waxing sunlight. Finally, he speaks. "The pain of a child's death," he says, quiet and dark, "cannot be quieted. It does not fade."

Calliope looks away, down at the lake. Her hair floats in the faint breeze that smells of blood and lake scum.

"I'll see Freya," you announce. "She's less likely to try and kill me than you."

"You will not."

"I don't have to listen to you." you snap, looking your father dead in the eye. "I'm not a child. I'm going. Stay here if you want. If she does kill me, well." You sling the Talon bow over your shoulder. "At least there's an Omen that won't come to pass."

Father rears back like you've struck him. Even Calliope snaps a look at you, lips parted in shock. You can't bring yourself to care. You set off down the mountainside, leaving Jormungandr's cooling corpse behind.

Calliope follows you. After a long moment, your father does, too.

~

Marcus had stayed in the boat. You say nothing to him but motion for him to follow.

The ground shakes thrice on the way to Freya's grove.

"The Omens are breaking," Calliope explains before you can ask. "Fenrir is struggling free. His thrashing will shake the whole realm."

The path to the grove is different than you remember. You find yourself backtracking more than you'd like to admit, and the morning has turned to afternoon before you find the thick brambles hiding the path in the cliffs. Calliope follows right on your heels, Marcus stumbling behind her through the dense underbrush, and even further back, Father brings up the rear. You hear Mimir trying to coax information out of him, but Father tells him once to be silent and Mimir doesn't ask again.

Chaurli is still in the grove, along with the red-leafed trees, though the sprightly evergreens have begun to overtake them. The enormous beast blinks sleepily at you and doesn't raise his head. You reach out gingerly with your mind, finding his slow and plodding thoughts. He thinks of the hot air of summertime, and the noonday sun it's been too long since he felt warm his shell, and the birdsong in the trees. Loki, he finally rumbles in your head, and you break into a smile and send him your happiness that he still remembers you after all this time.

Marcus hesitates behind you, but you shoo him back towards the trees. Just because Chaurli recognizes you doesn't mean Freya won't still treat you with hostility, especially since Father refuses to heed your suggestion to let you handle the goddess alone.

You carefully reach out and, sensing no resistance from the giant turtle, place a gentle hand on his nose. Chaurli closes his eyes. The soil has settled nearly to his nostrils. He hasn't moved for a very long time. You wonder if Freya still lives in the grove at all. You wonder if her house is even there, under Chaurli's shell.

But with a groan that shakes the aspens and evergreens, the turtle hefts his massive bulk out of the earth, showering you in dirt, plants his enormous feet on the ground, and raises himself just enough for you to see the weathered door beneath.

_Thank you,_ you try to convey, but Chaurli's thoughts have already returned to summer sunlight and birdsong.

Birdsong that suddenly rises to a shrieking pitch, and then a flock of little starlings flap screaming out of the trees and off to the west. _Predator!_ they cry in panic.

You look back to the trees.

The eagle swoops into the clearing.

  _Shit,_ you think.

Vines burst from the ground and stretch for your ankles. You shove Marcus aside and bolt, leaping up onto Chaurli's snout to stay out of Freya's reach. Calliope isn't as quick and the curling vines snare her legs, dragging her down to the dirt. She bares her teeth and pulls her hunting knife from somewhere.

Father's Blades come singing from behind, chains rattling, severing the vines binding Calliope even as a blast of Vanir magic comes spraying from above - strange, bright-sparkling dust you know you shouldn't breathe in even as it settles in a fog around the grove. Freya may be cursed to bring no harm to any living creature, but you're sure she's had time to circumvent or break the enchantment. Even if not, you know she can find other ways to ruin your day. You bury your nose and mouth in your sleeve and clutch the tortoise's scaly hide even as he rears back, as startled as such an old beast can be.

"FREYA!" Father roars from the ground. He cuts away more vines as they explode from the soil in showers of dirt. You can smell singed roots as the Blades do their work.

The eagle wheels and comes swooping down again, shifting its shape in golden swirls of dusty Vanir magic, and Freya stands barefoot in the dirt, her cape of eagle feathers trailing behind. Calliope, free of the vines, springs to her feet, knife in one hand and her wooden flute in the other.

"You should not have come!" Freya shouts back. Her voice is cold and witchcraft-loud, booming through the trees.

"Freya, listen," you start, but then dive back to the ground as a thick root as big around as your waist breaks from the ground and flies for you. You hit the dirt and roll, landing back on your feet and dancing back as more vines burst from the ground in showers of soil.

Freya bares her teeth and more wings burst into being, and she takes off into the sky as an eagle again. You bite back a curse and reach for your own magic. You're not a child anymore. You're her match or better and you'll prove it.

The hawk in your heart springs up, hot-blooded and ready, and your skin melds into itching feathers. You shed yourself and rise on the wave of heat that the disturbed soil beneath gives you, letting the moment of vertigo pass as your human eyes change into something stronger.

Freya comes wheeling back, talons outstretched. She outweighs you in this form, by far - you'll have to be careful. Even if she doesn't want to kill you, she easily could, even by accident. You swerve out of her way, clawing into the trunk of a pine to sharpen your turn, and whip around at twice the speed.

In the split second before you collide with Freya, even as she tries to change course, you let your form change again, and the impact shakes your bones as you both hit the ground. But now it's you who's bigger. Now you're the wolf.

The eagle twists under your heavy paw, pinned to the dirt. You heave for breath, a little dazed from the shapeshifting, from the way colors drain from the grove around you. It's hard magic to master - you've had time, but it's hard and your heart pounds in your ears like you've been fighting for an hour.

Freya starts to change back, Vanir magic stinging you as her shape shivers under your paw, but then chains rattle and she goes still, bright golden eye staring up at you, past you. The shadow of your father falls over both of you, cursed Blade drawn back and ready to strike.

"Freya," he says, "we have not come to harm you. Do not force our hand."

You risk a glance over your shoulder and see Calliope behind him, flute in one hand, the other in front of Marcus as if to keep him back. You wonder if she can banish Freya the way she did to Thor on the mountainside. You make a mental note to ask her how that works.

The eagle falls away from her form, and Freya lies frozen on the ground, pinned by the shoulder. You don't let her up. She spits at you.

You let the wolf melt away but keep a vise grip on her arm, pressing hard against the packed dirt beneath. "Freya," you say, firm but without anger. "We need your help."

It's the wrong thing to say. Freya barks a short peal of bitter laughter in your face. "Of course you do!" she cries. "I told you to leave me in peace!"

"I know. We wouldn't have come if it weren't important." You're as tall as she is now. It's strange. In your childhood memory she towered over you, and when she leaned down to speak to you she was bent nearly double. She seems so much smaller now. A thousand years of grief shine from her cold eyes.

"What care have I for your troubles?" Freya snaps. "Find another witch!"

"We can't." You tighten your grip to get her attention. "Freya, listen. Odin is bringing about Ragnarok."

"Good." Freya turns her head and again spits into the dirt. "Let Midgard burn, and you and I with it."

"Thor killed Jormungandr," you say, and swallow the memory of blood steaming on the mountainside. "Earlier this morning."

That gets her attention. Her eyes widen, just a little, but it's enough for you to seize the moment. "We think he's going to try and free Surtr next. We have to get there first, but we don't know where he's imprisoned. All we need is a destination. Then you'll never see us again."

Freya looks at you long and hard. Now that you're looking at her, really looking, her mane of chestnut-brown hair is streaked with gray, and the lines around her eyes are as deep as crags in a cliff face. Something about her reminds you of Father. Freya looks old.

You take the risk and let go of her arm, back off, get to your feet, offer her a hand up. She takes it. A tiny victory.

"If anyone else could tell us, we'd ask them," you go on as Freya absently brushes soil and dead leaves from her clothes. "But there's no one else. Not anymore."

Freya reaches out for you, and you see Father go tense behind her, but she only takes the hem of your shirt between two fingers. There's a splash of blood there you hadn't noticed. Jormungandr's blood. The cold has gone from Freya's eyes, replaced by a fresh grief, or perhaps an old one.

"Just tell us where Surtr is." You drop your voice. Not so much that Father can't hear, but enough that maybe Freya will heed you as the child she used to know. "You'll never see us again. And we'll fuck over Odin and all of Asgard or die trying." _And save your life,_ you don't say. You don't think it'll be much motivation for her.

Like a snowdrop blooming in the dead of winter, Freya smiles. It's a small, sad smile, like in your fuzziest memories of Mother when you asked for the dozenth time when Father was coming home. "There is no way off Midgard," Freya says, the edge of her voice sharp as a dwarven blade. "You couldn't get to Surtr if you tried."

"Were you the one who sealed Tyr's travel room?"

"I was."

"Then unseal it. Tell us which realm to go to."

Freya shakes back her gray-streaked hair. "It cannot be undone. But Surtr dwelt in Muspelheim, long ago."

You remember the place. "Is he still there?"

"Doubtful. Odin knew that Surtr's power would grow, feeding off the flames of the realm. It's likely he imprisoned Surtr in Jotunheim."

The name gives you goose bumps, but you don't let it show. "We've gotten there once. We can do it again."

Freya releases the hem of your shirt. "You are welcome to surprise me," she says.

With no semblance of a goodbye, the eagle bursts into being and takes flight. Freya vanishes into the trees, and you're left with blood on your clothes and an overwhelming sense that you'll never see her again.


End file.
